Erika Alonso
My recent work lies at the interstices between abstraction and figuration: painterly swirls of color, lyrical lines, a watchful eye in the sky, windows as escape hatches, reflection pools, cascading flowers (that are also people), birds, snakes, and animals of all kinds.
My paintings explore how memories—and the feelings they evoke—can translate visually into paint through intuitive use of color and strong gestural marks.
Erika Alonso (. 1987) is a second - generation Cuban - American artist who lives and works in Houston, Texas. She spent her childhood in Southern California, a place to which she often "escapes" while painting. Alonso is a self taught and unabashedly panterly painter whose works are meant to capture a moment in all of its fleetingness - the movement and rush and whirl of it all.
Exhibitions & Residencies
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Coming Exhibition (2023)
Alise Art Group Presents
Erika Alonso Birds Are People Too (and other thoughts)
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Past Exhibition (2022)
Alise Art Group Presents
Erika Alonso Land(E)Scape
Watch Erika Alonso“Land(e)scape”
Erika Alonso x Houston Art Alliance Land(E)scape
Inspired by the stories and memories of women who immigrated to the United States from Latin America.
For several years, Erika Alonso has explored the subjective constitution of memory by working at the uncertain intersection of abstraction, landscape, and figuration. With the works in Land(e)scape, she has developed the narrative dimension of her endeavor by incorporating oral histories. In 2022, she worked with three women who immigrated to the United States - and timately the Houston area - from Latin America: Hilda Diaz-Alonso, Irma Camarillo-Napierkowski, and Marie Casamayor-Harvey. This exhibition documents their stories, which served to inspire the accompanying paintings.
As you view the exhibition, click on the QR codes to hear selected excerpts from the oral history recordings.
About the artist
Erika Alonso (b. 1987) is a second-generation Cuban-American artist who lives and works in Houston, Texas. She spent her childhood in Southern California, a place to which she often "escapes" while painting. Alonso is a self-taught artist and an unabashedly painterly painter whose works are meant to capture a moment in all of its fleetingness - the movement and rush and whirl of it all.
Funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.
